Even Seven Billion Simple Acts of Kindness will not Alter the Outcome

United States in the 21st Century:

"Afghan national Alif Khan told Amnesty International that he was held in US custody in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for five days in May 2002. He said that he was held in handcuffs, waist chains, and leg shackles for the whole time, subjected to sleep deprivation, denied water for prayer or washing, and was kept in a cage-like structure with eight people.” Amnesty International

Myers Enterprises located in the US State of Denver, Colorado, produces the "stun cuff” that shocks unruly prisoners back to order. It takes international orders. Axon Enterprise made $863 million in revenue in 2021 with one of its core product being the Taser, according to its Investor Slide Deck. There are 960 thousand Tasers floating around the United States and in Europe. Axon sells a number of other products particularly integrated computing observation and reporting systems. While there are complaints about deaths involving Taser's, or what are known as Conducting Electricity Devices (CED's), in June 2022 the Office of Justice Programs found that. "law enforcement need not refrain from deploying CEDs, provided the devices are used in accordance with accepted national guidelines.” Meanwhile, Amnesty International in a December 2020 report seeks strict controls on CED's (good luck with that). Since a Taser is a form of gun, it falls, arguably, under the protection of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (the right to keep and bear arms).

General Mike Minihan, the US Air Mobility Commander opined recently:

"Lethality matters most. When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger. This is who we are. We are lethal. Do not apologize for it, after listing distinguished Air Force commanders like Gen. Curtis LeMay and Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, who had no scruples against killing the enemy. The pile of our nation's enemy dead, the pile that is the biggest, is in front of the United States Air Force,” he said. Task & Purpose, September 2022

Imagine a world where roughly 5 billion of the Earth's 7 billion people has access to a World Wide Web of knowledge that would allow them to search studies on anatomy, chemical engineering, genetics, geography, anthropology, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and military science, Shannon's theory of information, crops and farming, and more. Much more, it turns out. There are free online courses which allow you to learn Algebra or just about any technical or non-technical subject matter on the planet. Want to refute of confirm what "a leader” just told you, look it up online. And collaboration, the Web was designed just for that.

Instead the Web has become more polluted, if that is possible, with cognitive/attention span killing programs like Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, and thousands of reality bending nuanced disinformation sites that plague the Web. What was supposed to have been a liberating force for humanity's knowledge is now a crass advertising and propaganda monster. But, perhaps the saddest thought is that it doesn't take much to tunnel through all the bull&^%$ and find the data buried behind the cognitive/attention span killing cotton candy. Information sources such as the National Institutes of Health, New England Medical Journal, Defense Technology Information Center and a plethora of other sites on the Web like them are credible, reliable sources. Prominent universities in the USA typically publish their rigorous research findings (MIT, Harvard, CALTECH, Stanford). Do you want to find one place that gives the Russian military campaign in Ukraine its props on maneuver warfare? Look no further than the US Marine Corps Gazette, August 2022, paper 22, authored by Marinus.

The Web has become a partisan wasteland with users looking to bounce their left, right and center world views right back into their brains after some sort of affirmation by the left, right and center triad. Rarely, if ever, do they cross over into the realm of the other.

I suppose that the Web imitates life in meatspace and there it is arguably worse:

• global economic woes,
• USA challenging China and Russia directly,
• elections of significance in Brazil and the United States,
• an increase in violence in America's cities,
• a pandemic that is not over,
• climate change,
• shifting international alliances,
• America's global sanctions regime,
• Russia vs Ukraine conflict,
• exploding healthcare costs,
• food shortages,
• finance capital.

Ad nauseam.

Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, summed it all up in a recent speech to the United Nations in August 2022:

"The seriousness of the present moment obliges me to share difficult but true words with you. Everything that we are doing today seems impotent and vague. Our words make a hollow and empty echo compared to the reality that we are facing. The reality is that no one listens to anyone, no one strives for real agreements and problem solving, and almost everyone cares only about their own interests.”

Solutions?

Why prolong the inevitable end?

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected]